28.8.10

THE SCHIRN'S "PLAYING THE CITY 2" PROJECT ONCE AGAIN TRANSFORMS CENTRAL FRANKFURT INTO A SHOWPLACE FOR A RANGE OF ACTIONS AND PERFORMANCES

Following last year's success, the exhibition project Playing the City 2 once again presents a wide range of artistic activities in public space, involving the city and its inhabitants in a variety of ways. From 8 to 26 September 2010, central Frankfurt will see new actions taking place daily, from performances to installations to "guerrilla actions". At the heart of the project lies an intense debate about public space and the "participatory turn" within contemporary art. Around 20 collaborative and participatory works are planned, some specially conceived for the project, by Nina Beier, Clarina Bezzola, Julien Bismuth, Clegg & Guttmann, Cosalux, Christoph Faulhaber, For Use / Numen, Swetlana Gerner, Jördis Hille, Christoph von Löw, Josef Loretan, Jan Lotter, Annika Lundgren, Lee Mingwei, Ivan Moudov, Anny and Sibel Öztürk, Paola Pivi, Plural Art Collective feat, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Reactor, Annika Ström, Leonid Tishkov, Gavin Turk and Vanja Vukovic. In parallel a project office, the "Zentrale", will be set up in the Schirn's exhibition spaces, from where the project team will pursue its work in public, fine-tuning the website, answering questions on the exhibition, and organising and documenting all the activities. Playing the City 2 can also be followed via the internet, in a digital extension of public space. The website developed for the project, www.playingthecity.de, assembles all the latest videos, texts and visual material, an exhibition calendar and a blog, and will also be networked beyond the physical venues via numerous social media networks. It is thus a catalogue, exhibition forum and platform for discussion all in one.

Playing the City 2 opens up public space as a collective, free arena that can be moulded, that questions its boundaries, and that involves its inhabitants. The site-specific actions take place within a time-limited framework in which they are produced and can be experienced, and in which production and reception are closely connected. The traditional definitions of a work and of its authorship are negated: both terms that have been questioned since the 1960s, not least through action art. Many of the works developed for Playing the City 2 can only be realised through the involvement of the public; whether they are actions that provoke fortuitous street confrontations or sculptures that invite use. But at the very least they are intended to create a confrontation and a dialogue with the – sometimes randomly generated – audience, and to transform public space into a playing field with rules that are tested collaboratively. Can the public space really be taken as a place of different opinions and voices? What constitutes public opinion? What do we understand by public space? These are some of the questions raised by the Playing the City 2 project.

The concept that Playing the City 2 realises, on various levels, is a continuation of the ideas of the major avant-garde movements of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the Dada movement rejected "conventional" art and art forms as well as bourgeois ideals, taking to the street instead. It is also worth mentioning Guy Debord's Situationism, which 50 years later still has a strong influence on the contemporary art scene, notably on "Public Art", and which has inspired theoreticians such as Michel de Certeau to define space as a "practised place" and to locate its significance in the activities taking place within it. The urban researcher Armando Silva argues similarly, differentiating the city into the architectural fact and a performance consisting of human interactions. For artists of so-called relational aesthetics, processes such as intersubjectivity and interaction are both the starting and endpoints of their artistic work. According to Nicolas Bourriaud, the utopian potential in developing artistic spaces in this way lies in being able to provide alternative forms of sociality, critique and happiness. They have all turned away from the transformative potential of grand narratives, and instead see opportunity for change in the direct encounter with people.

Playing the City 2 offers a look into the wide varieties of current participatory and collaborative art: one large-scale installation by the Austrian-Croatian design collective For Use / Numen fills the architecture of the Schirn with a walk-in cocoon of transparent adhesive tape. Since the installation can be experienced and entered, it becomes a fixed component and can be used as such by the inhabitants of public space. The installation by artist duo Michael Clegg & Martin Guttmann, "Open Debate Station, Frankfurt", questions the structure and function of public debates. They design a discussion platform that, through fixed furniture and established rules of play, becomes a place for a public, structured and fair exchange of opinions. In this work, the two artists refer both to the tradition of Talmudic interpretation and to the history of the Frankfurt School. The Italian artist Paola Pivi will engineer unexpected situations on Frankfurt public transport as part of her work: during rush hour, an individual actor first starts to sing a song, and then gradually – apparently at random – more musicians will join in, singing or playing instruments, thereby disrupting the everyday situation of a silent trip by bus or tram.

The title of Annika Lundgren's project, "The Stock Is Rising", is a historical reference to a 1967 action, in which a group of 20,000 peace demonstrators led by Abbie Hoffmann gathered before the Pentagon in Washington D.C. and sang loudly to drive evil spirits from the building, as part of a protest against the Vietnam War. The action planned by Lundgren for Playing the City 2 is a response to the international financial crisis and will start by publishing information on the website www.stockisrising.com about the action, about Abbie Hoffman, about levitation as a form of parapsychological practice in which the pure force of thought overcomes the gravity of objects, and about the financial crisis. On 21 September 2010, between 15:00 and 17:35, participants in the action will gather in front of the Alte Börse (former stock exchange) in Frankfurt, and make the building hover. This action will be networked worldwide via the website.

DIRECTOR: Max Hollein

CURATOR: Matthias Ulrich

Interview Matthias Ulrich with Leonid Tishkov

Public space is a closely contested realm. Michel de Certeau moreover describes this space as the result of all activities occurring within that space. Why is it important as an artist to participate in these public struggles or activities, and what is there to be gained?

Art introduces utopias, contructs models of the world, rocks existing connections and thus creates the conditions for the break-up of social concepts and opens up new paths for social development. An artist’s discriminating glance sees something else, buried under the dense mass of the ruling ideology. Artists and poets – and they are part of society – can see what lies hidden, take note of the small and insignificant, detect glimpses of poetic beauty in piles of rubbish, return to trampled fields and break down invisible walls. They’re an important part of society even though the state pens them up in reservations, which is happening right now in Russia.

Saskia Sassen distinguishes between public space and publicly accessible space. What are your expectations of public space? Antiquity’s agora or modern mall?

Art can exist anywhere – in a drop of water in the fountain on the square, in the white cube of the gallery, in a mall or on the roof of my studio. Yet this existence is tantamount to the existence of art on Saturn, right up to the moment when the heart of the viewer responds to it (the art) and it settles in their memory, somewhere, on a chemical level. Public space, to me, is merely the place and opportunity to turn to one person, whoever is in front of me.

In recent years, the term social turn has been discussed in art theory. It stands for the integration of social processes and their alteration through artistic interventions and activities. How do you and your work refer to social turn?

Such a ‘turn’ had already been indicated at the beginning o the 20th century, namely by Vladimir Tatlin under the motto “Art into Life”. He claimed that art should actively participate in politics, economics, technology, science – human life in its totality. One of the first mobile sculptures in the world was the memorial for the III. International – and it was constructed by a multitude of people like a mass action or performance. In 1925, it moved in Leningrad as “izoustanovka” (art installation), adorned with utopian mottos, and the artist appeared as the “initiative unit”. The model of “Letishkov” I created in 1998 in Stockholm with the help of Swedish craftsmen, the theatrical performance at the Faerg factories during the same year, where more than 40 actors took part – those projects were based on Tatlin’s ideas of the structures of limitless technological and scientific progress and the organic, ‘natural’ way of living of humans. In my case, a kind of revision occurred, but the poetic-utopian part remained unchanged.

French philosopher Jacques Rancière puts emphasis on the creativity of the viewer, which an artwork could initiate. Shared creativity between the artist and the viewer, arranged in the participatory work of art, offers opportunities for new activities. Does this practice – sooner or later – render the artist redundant?

Every piece of art is charged with its creator’s energy, and if we are touched by a picture or sculpture of an artist – even if they’ve been dead for a long time – we feel that charge. Maybe new art has more opportunities to transmit this charge, with its experiences in theatre, cinema and the media. Within the industry there is the figure of the ‘animator’ who enlivens the inert masses waiting for entertainment. This experience is being utilized by contemporary art, assuming not only the role of the “craftsman”, but also the “clown”. But key is the creative energy of the artist. What does it mean, what’s its significance, its effect on a passive viewer. So a future without artists is not possible – their number increases, but their presence less noticeable. Art becomes more and more democratic, free, more ‘humanistic’ due to the education, communication and availability of the means of production.

What does it mean to you, if the production as well as the appropriation of art work includes the activity of other people – artists, non-artists, the audience?

Art as an open system has always been very attractive to me. In the early 1990 I worked for a project called “Dabloiden” with disabled children, at the beginning of the following decade I organized exhibitions and actions on the roof of my studio in collaboration with other artists; the central theme was not just location but also the idea of art as a free zone. And if the market dictates the rule of the supermarket, the recognizability of its style, repeatability of its name, endless self-citation, so that’s why. Working with other authors (often not artists) I don’t just get the unforeseeable result, but true inspiration as well.

What are your experiences so far with projects that have required the active participation of the public, particularly in relation to their production and realization?

The last large project – the performance “Die Fabrik der Dabloiden” (The factory of the Dabloids) which happened in a factory in Ekaterinburg with the support of the NCCA (centre for contemporary art). The disused factory floor had been equipped for the production of the Dabloids (I have been working with these creatures for 20 years); this work was undertaken by workers who previously had worked at this factory. I paid them the average wage they had earned before being made redundant. Following my instructions, approx. 10 people – spectators could join in – made over 30 objects during a five day period. This social action now exists as an installation containing video, the comments of the participants that are registered as artists. With this project I realized the idea of “Art into Life” by communication my creativity as an artist and conveying the means of production and money. In this case, the artist not only exchanges energy with the audience, but appears as a responsible member of society and transforms the initially meaningless creative act into a radical social gesture.

Within participatory art we can differentiate between performers and co-creators. Art as an idea and the result as social work?

I call the artist an “initiative unit” – after Tatlin – he or she is the leader of any creative practise. The curator is a commissioner (as in the soviet army), universal figure of the ‘helper’. They’re needed as an interpreter for the artist to communicate his activities to the audience. The artist, the one generating the idea, can be ‘actor’ or not! In my project “Private Moon” I allow the celestial body to go on an autonomous journey, it is handedover from on to another viewer within a set timeframe. They receive the object and create the installtion themselves, immerse it in their habitat. Poetry plays an important role in this tale, it is being materialized by the moon having descended from its celestial place. Participants feel it, because they have ‘received’ the moon. How and where, what they feel when they receive the object, how they interact – all this is part of the project. “Private Moon” is poetry in action. Implementation of utopian ideas into our sphere. And I declare: poetry changes the world for the better!

Jean-Luc Nancy is critical of community in the sense of its creating a common-being, having been awarded a quasi religious identity. Pluralism, according to Boris Groys, is the principal value created by a participatory practice. Apart from another successful operation of the communication of the art system, why do contemporary artists cooperate, collaborate, and work with artist’s collectives?

There is no shartage of communication – to the contrary! But we’re lacking creative power! Art has to be a free zone, where artists – using their imagination, poetic responsibility – create a new world where people can live without religious or national prejudice and without national borders. And this is why in future current international artistic experiences can be applied to the whole of mankind.

A large part of participatory art refers to happening or theatre. The invisible theatre, a form of discourse originated in 1920’s Soviet Union, entirely relinquished the separation of actor and audience. How do you and your work relate to theatre?
Some of my theatrical performances end with me leaving behind decorations and objects as an installation in the exhibition hall. Viewers in this hall don’t see any activity, the game is already up. But sometimes they correlate with the objects through touch, play, photography, and so they become a part of the installation, too. However, I am more interested in the long term relations with the viewer, he has to somehow continue my art long after the initial encounter with it. In 2006, for example, a group of young people organized the production of Dabloids – I wasn’t even part of it. Approx. 50 people gathered at the Moskva-River and produced – publicly, in front of an audience – the Dabloids. And then one of them flew into the sky… I was invited to this action as a viewer – nothing more. And I feel it is a real privilege, simply being a spectator in your own world!How much importance do you attach to affecting the behavior of others with your art? What do you expect from the audience in general?
I absolutely can not take the role of a dictator! It’s about violence, and to me, only love matters. Only love renders our world feasible, it creates art and justifies its existence. And my viewers are those people who need love. That is to say everyone living on Earth!